


Lonely Road

by dearmrsawyer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Wee!chesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 11:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1816567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearmrsawyer/pseuds/dearmrsawyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam is away at Stanford Dean finds himself on the road beside his father - the only place his ambitions ever led him. But with the back seat empty something’s missing and Dean feels that maybe he was wishing for the wrong thing all this time. Drabble focused on the brothers' bond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lonely Road

Dean feels that maybe he was wishing for the wrong thing all this time. 

Air slips between Dean’s fingers, cooling the afternoon drive under a pressing sun. With the windows rolled down on an endless highway a summer’s day in the Midwest is bearable. To his left, John’s fingers drum to Black Sabbath as he eases the Impala down broken asphalt. The way John drives you’d never know the roads to be anything but fresh rolled. The corner of Dean’s mouth twists up. Twenty-three and living the only dream he’s ever entertained - riding at his father’s right hand as they save the world one monster at a time. But the road here had rivalled the one stretching beneath them out.

A childhood spent riding in the back seat, hooking his chin over to glimpse his father’s view of the world ahead. Always berated and swatted away, Dean dreamt of the front seat. To sit up front and be considered his father’s equal. For the time being he remained with Sammy, keeping an eye on his little brother just as John had ordered. This was Dean’s highest order, the duty he had been tasked with at four years of age and never let go of since. And he fulfilled that task. He sat by Sam when he needed a child seat, when he first learnt how to use a seatbelt, even when Sam declared he was in double digits and too old for seatbelts. Dean argued that Sam was never too old for safety but Sam simply answered ‘You don’t wear one’, and that was the first time Dean realised his little brother had been learning by his example. From then on Dean only ever sat beside Sam with his seatbelt secured, hoping he could reverse that lesson.

Then came the day Dean was invited to sit up front. It happened after a shapeshifter kill - Dean’s first - and John tipped his head towards the passenger seat with pride. “Hop on in.” Eyes glowing, heart pounding, Dean’s head told him he was moving up. But his heart told him he was moving away. Away from his duty, from the one he was supposed to be beside. Dean ignored both these feelings and Sam’s lowered eyes and took up residence in the passenger seat. Fifteen years old and never looking back. Not for fear of seeing who was still behind.

And then came the day the backseat was vacant. That first drive passed in silence. As did the second. And the third. Not until two days and eight hundred miles had passed did John finally speak; he asked Dean to change cassettes.

They never truly acknowledged the absence. For a few months Dean felt as though the Impala had lost balance, that at any second the front end of the car would tip forward, throwing Dean and his father through the windshield. He thought the only way to avoid this tragedy would be to get Sam back, to have him take up his rightful place in the backseat and return balance to Dean’s world. But he was twenty-two and he’d swallowed enough reality to know Sam would not bring up the rear again.

Sometimes Dean wondered if he could have avoided all that, could have kept Sam here, if he’d only remained by his side. Maybe then Sam wouldn’t have wanted to leave.

Dean’s head swivels to take in the untouched leather and his mouth flat-lines. In a year he’s only just shedding that reflex. After years wishing for a chance to see ahead, he wonders if he has overlooked something more important. Something he can no longer look to. But now he has no choice; the only way to look is ahead. To keep his visions in line with John’s, to make it his vision too.


End file.
